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Erinn Davis and Alex Tushingham braced themselves to see the motorist who had killed their beloved dad Bruce, to tell her how a lapse behind the wheel was ravaging their family.

“The devastation and shock of our loss affects all of us every moment of every day,” Alex read from a victim impact statement his family had tearfully crafted.

But driver Nora Jones never heard that because she was not in court. Alex poured his heart out to a room that was empty except for people paid to be there and a few spectators waiting for the next traffic case.

Jones’s legal representative pleaded guilty on her behalf to unsafely leaving a Markham roadway, reduced from careless driving, in August 2013. A justice of the peace fined her $500. Case closed.

It never crossed Davis’s mind the driver could stay home. Her family did know, though, that the violent death of a fit, loving 63-year-old cyclist — who had met his grandson the day he was born and returned the next with a photo of him on his T-shirt — would be reduced to a minor traffic violation.

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“The charge was no different if she hit a mailbox, or nothing, or killed my dad,” Davis says. “There’s no part of the charge that relates to the outcome, which is the crazy part.”

With pedestrians and cyclists dying on Toronto streets at an alarming rate — more than 40 so far this year — safety advocates are demanding reforms to lax penalties in hopes of saving lives.

“We give the car a special status in society,” says Patrick Brown, a Toronto lawyer who has argued civil suits for grieving families of dozens of cyclists and pedestrians.

“If you want to look at your phone or talk at length to your kid, your car is becoming a weapon … If you use any other weapon to kill someone, like negligent discharge of a gun, you will face very severe penalties.”

While there is sometimes anger at the drivers, it’s Ontario laws that dictate penalties. Brown believes car bias is baked into our laws, into how police investigate and question drivers, and finally into drivers’ sentencing at court.

Theoretically, drivers can face up to 10 years in jail under a criminal charge of dangerous driving causing injury, up to six months in jail and a fine of $2,000 for the provincial offence of careless driving, or they can face an $85 fine for a minor traffic offence such as an improper turn.

Legal observers say courts almost never give the maximums and usually accept plea bargains to less serious charges. There are many examples of motorists paying less than $1,000 for actions that killed a person.

By contrast, Ontario courts have also fined a tourist $1,000 for hunting a bear with a spear, developers $5,000 for each illegally removed tree and a man $2,000 for drunkenly driving a riding mower.

Reached by phone, Jones — who told police her sandal got caught on the gas pedal, sending her car to the shoulder and then across the road head-on into Bruce Tushingham — tearfully refused to comment on her penalty.

The wife of Alvito Abreu, who was 79 when he was fined $2,000 and handed a six-month partial driving ban after killing 4-year-old Milad Sher-Ahmad, refused to put her husband on the phone.

“He has been through so much stress and I don’t want to put him through any more,” she said. “His health has deteriorated. We are people in our 80s and it’s really very, very painful.”

Asked if the penalty for careless driving — running a Mississauga stop sign and turning left into an intersection, and the boy — was appropriate, she said: “I’ve accepted that and that’s it. I pray for the family every day and it was not intentional.”

More than 10,000 Toronto pedestrians and 5,000 cyclists were killed or seriously injured by motorists between 2008 and 2012. For the pedestrians, according to a city staff analysis, the vast majority had the right of way.

The group is pushing for safer road design but also the adoption of “vulnerable road user” laws, with significantly tougher penalties, first introduced in Oregon.

If motorists recklessly kill someone, they should face fines in the $50,000 range, Stark says. Drivers convicted in fatal crashes should be forced to attend court so they hear victim impact statements, he adds, and get significant driving bans and be forced to perform community service.

“Where we are now with distracted driving is where we were a generation ago with drunk driving,” says Stark. “It’s going to take some time for public opinion to shift and for people to realize it’s not acceptable for me to be tapping away on my phone” while driving.

Edward Sapiano, a lawyer who successfully challenged a Toronto police account of Tom Samson’s death that seemed to blame the cyclist, says new laws are not the answer.

“We need the police to investigate the death of pedestrians and bicyclists like they investigate all other homicides,” with appropriate resources and trained investigators.

“They have plenty of (laws) — dangerous driving causing death or bodily harm, impaired causing death, manslaughter. It’s the investigations that are deficient.”

Last June, provincial Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca told Metro news he was “open-minded” about additional penalties or fines. Six months and many fatalities later, he told the Star much the same. Transportation staff continue to look at options.

“I don’t mind continuing to work on this, that doesn’t bother me in the least, it is part of my responsibility, but I want to make sure if we’re going to go forward and we have a plan, it’s a plan that is more likely to work than not, and I think that requires a little more time … ” Del Duca said.

“I completely respect the frustration and the impatience that some people are feeling and we’ll have more to say, I think, in the relatively near future.”

Davis, meanwhile, chokes up describing her sons growing up robbed of a “super-involved” grandpa.

“Stiffer penalties won’t help me, I still lost my dad, but maybe they’ll make people think twice about being distracted by the radio, or their coffee, or their shoe, or whatever,” she says.

“If everyone is more focused, in less of a hurry and more conscious of others, maybe other families won’t be devastated like mine was. I never thought this would happen to us.”

A look at how drivers are penalized

Adrian Dudzicki, a 23-year-old elite squash player originally from Ottawa, was cycling to practice in North York on a November 2013 morning when Aleksey Aleksev sped through a red light and fatally hit him. The driver said he was adjusting the heating or the radio in his BMW car shortly before he hit the cyclist.

Aleksev was found guilty of unusually serious charges — dangerous driving causing death, criminal negligence causing death and manslaughter — and sentenced to two years less a day in jail, three years probation and a 15-year driving ban.

Riverdale mom Erica Stark was standing on a sidewalk next to a bus shelter in Scarborough, with a service-dog-in-training on a leash. Elizabeth Taylor, for no known reason, veered her minivan toward the curb, jumped it and slammed into a TTC pole and a utility box. Stark, a 42-year-old volunteer and mom of three young boys, died at the scene.

Taylor was found guilty of careless driving and given a $1,000 fine, six months probation, a one-month total driving ban and a five-month partial driving ban.

Bakhtawar Malik, a 13-year-old Mississauga girl about to start high school, was standing on a sidewalk at Bloor St. and Havenwood Dr. waiting for the light to change. Brikhena Xaci’s car jumped the curb and knocked Malik over a fence, killing her.

Xaci, 43, pleaded guilty to careless driving and received a $1,130 fine. A charge for running the red light was withdrawn in return for her guilty plea.

Edouard Le Blanc was cycling a hydro corridor near his Scarborough home in October 2014 when he was hit by a driver on Warden Ave. Witnesses told police Le Blanc had the right of way and the motorist ran a red light. Le Blanc, a 62-year-old retiree about to travel the globe with his wife, died at the scene after an impact so hard his organs were not fit for donation.

William P. Laurie pleaded guilty to careless driving after a lengthy legal fight and was fined $700 and given six demerit points.

Milad Sher-Ahmad, 4, of Mississauga, was being walked to kindergarten at Artesian Dr. Public School by his mother when, a block before their destination, a driver rolled past a stop sign into the intersection and hit the boy. A school bus driver who witnessed the crash said the 79-year-old driver seemed unaware of what he had done.

Alvito Abreu pleaded guilty to careless driving and was fined $2,000 under the Highway Traffic Act. A justice of the peace ordered him not to drive for six months except for medical appointments or religious functions.

Jessica Spieker, a personal fitness trainer, does not recall what happened while she was cycling on Bathurst St. near Shallmar Blvd. in Forest Hill. She woke up in an emergency room with a fractured spine, torn ligaments in one leg, and a brain injury that for a time impaired her short-term memory.

Motorist Sharon L. Gancman received a $300 fine.

Correction — Dec. 13, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the numbers of pedestrians and cyclists who were injured or died as a result of a collision with a motor vehicle in Toronto.

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